Rao's Little Cousin
by ancarett
Summary: Under the light of Sol, cousins Kara and Clark bond over shared losses, old beliefs and new hopes.


Author's Note: Written for isilweth in the LJ ninebillion challenge. Thanks to my beta-reader, htbthomas.

* * *

"What're are you doing, Kara?"

Clark loomed over his cousin, dressed in a barely-there bikini and reclining on a plaid blanket in the middle of a grassy farm field.

Kara rolled over slightly, squinting to see Clark against the bright sunlight that surrounded his tall figure. Clad in jeans, a tee and his heavy jacket, with a hay bale in each hand, he appeared bigger than normal.

Kara scrunched up her nose. She would never let her baby cousin Kal-El feel that he could make her feel even a little bit intimidated.

"Well?" he asked.

Kara lay back on the blanket, adjusting herself so she was fully exposed to the sun's beams. "If you must know, I'm worshiping Rao."

Clark cocked his head at a near-acute angle. "Worshiping what?"

"Who," Kara corrected as she flicked hair away from her shoulder. "Rao. The Sun God of Krypton."

"What?" Clark asked incredulously.

Kara sighed. "Rao?" she repeated, doubtfully. "You don't know who – of course you don't know."

Reluctantly, she sat up. Patting the empty space on the blanket, she invited her cousin to join her. Still staring at her with a look that suggested she'd grown a second head, Clark put down the hay to join her.

Kara pulled up her knees to her chest, looping her arms over her leg as she turned her gaze to the endless Kansas horizon. "What do you know of Kryptonian religion?"

Clark sighed. "Not much, really. I never really thought about it until now."

Kara brought her gaze back to meet Clark's questioning look. "Well, I'm not the world's expert," she began, before her cousin chuckled.

"What?" Kara demanded as his laugh deepened.

"You _are_ the world's expert, Kara," he explained as his laughter died down. "Not a lot of Kryptonians left running around to expound on their religion, now?"

Kara frowned and tightened her grasp of her knees. "Ha-ha."

Clark sobered, belatedly aware of the painful side of his observation. "Sorry," he offered.

Kara nodded and relaxed. "Well, maybe I am. But it's not like I know everything. Religion wasn't that, um, big on Krypton anymore. A lot of people thought they were beyond that, maybe."

Kara raised a hand to point at the sun. "But the chief god worshiped on Krypton was the Sun God, Rao. Which was also the name of our sun," she added.

"Chief god?" Clark asked.

"There were other gods and goddesses on Krypton like Yuda, the goddess of love and Mordo, the god of strength," Kara explained. "It was like a whole–". She broke off at that point and cast one hand out wildly.

"A pantheon?" Clark suggested.

"What's that?" Kara asked.

"It's an Earth word; I think it's Greek for all the gods as a group."

Kara smiled at his clarification. It seemed as if the beams of sunlight falling on her face were reflected outwards in her pleased glow. Clark smiled in automatic response.

"That's it," she agreed. "All the gods and goddesses of Krypton had originally been worshiped by the different peoples of our planet. As our people came together, so did the gods."

Her smile faded a bit. "At least, I think that's how it happened. Ancient history was never my strongest subject."

Clark reached out to cover her hand with his. "You're doing pretty well."

"Thanks," Kara said. "Look, anyway, Rao was the most important of the gods, the leader of them all. Just like the sun was the centre of our system, Rao was the centre of Krypton beliefs. But it played out more in pageants and museums than in our daily lives."

Kara's eyes got a far-off look, as if she was recalling times past on Krypton. Clark squeezed her fingers and she visibly shook off the reverie. "I used to pray to him, when I was a little girl, asking for Rao to bring peace and happiness. There was a lot of, um, tension in our household when I was growing up."

"I'm sorry," Clark said.

Kara shrugged with assumed carelessness. "It's okay, Kal, um, I mean Clark! It's not like it was your fault. The House of El was never quiet and peaceful."

She reached off the blanket to sweep her hands in the dry, pale stems of grass. "Anyway, my prayers were never answered. And there's no Rao, anymore, anyway. It was all just nothing."

Clark cocked his head to one side. "Because the planet died, the belief died?"

Kara twisted away from Clark's view to stare at the twisted grass blades. "Face it. Except for some of the Zoners, who else remembers Rao? Our world's gone and so's the rest."

Clark reached out for her shoulder and squeezed that. "Just because something's gone doesn't mean that the faith in that is lost or misplaced. My mom and dad here taught me that belief's a pretty powerful force."

Kara smiled wistfully. "Martha really rocks. I wish I'd met Jonathan, too, though."

Now it was Clark's turn to look away. "He was. . . special."

Kara rocked forward across the blanket to capture Clark's hand. "And he's still very real to you, even though he's no longer here, right?"

Clark blinked rapidly as he nodded his agreement.

"I'm sorry," Kara offered.

"It's okay, Kara. I just wish that you'd been able to know him, too."

Kara sighed. "You know, back on Krypton, people used to believe that Rao died with every sunset and was reborn with every sunrise. Of course, it's been thousands of years since anyone really believed that, but, still." She smiled wistfully. "I found it kind of comforting to think that he would come back, every morning, no matter what."

She angled a glance up at the yellow sun that shone overhead. "And this isn't Krypton's sun, but it still comes back, every day. And it's done quite a bit for me."

With a mischievous smile, Kara reached over to grab one of Clark's discarded hay bales and, before he could stop her, hurled it across the field.

"Kara," Clark said warningly. Faster than he moved, she was floating in the air above the blanket, rising just out of his reach.

"Pity you can't fly," she said, teasingly. "Maybe you don't worship the sun enough."

"Kara," Clark growled in frustration, unwilling to reach up into the air where his cousin hovered, just out of reach. Sure, he could jump up to try and catch her, but she'd just fly away and wouldn't he look stupid?

Kara floated close to the ground but still far enough away to evade a grab. "So, aren't you going to get back to your farm work so I can get back to my communing with Rao's little yellow cousin?"

Clark grinned. "Kara, it's November. No sane woman, no earth woman, would be out in a bikini in Kansas at this time of year."

Kara wrinkled her nose. "Really? But those girls at the pageant said that they tanned all winter long."

"In tanning salons, Kara. With machines to darken their skin," Clark explained.

"Ewww, really?" Kara floated back up above the ground. "Well, I like the sun and I'm not cold."

Clark shook his head ruefully. "Just try to do your sun worshiping somewhere that nobody's going to see you then, okay?"

Kara nodded decisively. She flew in to swoop up her blanket (Clark stepped off of it just in time) and dashed off in a streak that would have been invisible without super sight. As she flew away, Clark smiled to himself and hefted up the one hay bale before marching stolidly across the field to fetch the other that'd she'd tossed away.

All the while, he had to admit, the sunlight streaming around him filled him with a new sense of peace and hopefulness. Kara might not have found all of that under the light of Rao, but Clark hoped, for both their sakes, that they'd find a second chance here under the light of Sol.


End file.
